But I hope you come back.
Even if I’m not there.
Even if you hate me.
Even if you never speak my name again.
Because I’ll be somewhere out there, loving you in silence.
Always.
—
Cass
I don’t read it.
I don’t fold it neatly.
I just slide it under my thin pillow like a landmine—something that could destroy someone if they step on it wrong and then I lie down.
Eyes open.
Body still.
Heart a barely-beating bruise.
No tears because the body only cries when it believes someone is still listening. And right now?
No one is.
Not him.
Not the stars.
Not the quiet.
Just me.
Breathing through the ache of loving someone who walked away and walking toward a war that might finish what he started.
Chapter
Sixteen
Dax
War doesn’t feel like war.
It feels like waiting.
Waiting for something to explode.
Waiting for someone not to come back.
Waiting for the ground to open up and take you, or the sky to fall, or the fucking silence between gunfire to be the last thing you ever hear and that’s the thing no briefing, no manual, no recruiter ever tells you — that it is the waiting that strips the skin first. The anticipation that rots the nerves. The stillness between violence that becomes its own kind of violence.
I don’t think people realise how quiet it gets.
